Sermons

Hidden in the Bread

Anne Emry
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church
July 27, 2008

Romans 8:26-39 Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

"Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes."

That phrase is the hardest for me to understand in a reading full of puzzling riddles. If the people listening to Jesus were trying to apply his words to their lives, when he finished speaking they probably had a mental checklist something like this:
• Plant mustard seed in the garden
• Bake bread
• Dig for buried treasure
• Buy expensive pearl
• Catch fish, keep good ones only

Does that seem like a meaningful “To Do List” for people in search of holiness?

No, of course not. But it has the benefit of being literal. It is a fundamentalist interpretation of the teaching of Jesus that captures the words and loses the meaning. Do you understand this? Do you?

This passage is linked with the lessons we have heard over the last two Sundays. Jesus addressed a crowd of five thousand men, and uncounted women and children. Like the television quiz show, “Jeopardy,” these are the answers Jesus gave them, so what is the question? I believe the question is: Can you show us the kingdom of heaven?
• I’d show you the mustard seed, but it is too tiny.
• I’d show you yeast, but it is microscopic. It is in the air.
• Treasure, well that is hidden.
• Pearls? Fish? They are in the deep, blue sea.

And maybe that is the point. The kingdom of heaven is hidden in the world. Hidden. Invisible. Mixed in. It is already present with us, but difficult to perceive.

The people listening to Jesus were expecting the Messiah to come from the line of David—the greatest king of Israel—and to be born in Bethlehem (which means House of Bread). They expected the Messiah to unite Israel, to throw off the Roman oppressors, and to usher in a royal kingdom of peace and plenty. Their eyes were firmly fixed on the visible kingdom. And Jesus insisted on showing them the INVISIBLE one.

Two thousand years ago, a woman intending to bake bread did not point her grocery cart down the aisle under the “baking supplies” sign and reach for a package of yeast. The word “yeast” is an anachronism. A better translation would be to just stick with the word “leaven,” the term for the microscopic natural leavening agents that are in the air around us.

San Francisco is famous for sourdough bread, which was originally made by mixing flour and water into a batter that was left in a warm place to attract the “wild” yeasts and begin to ferment. One of my cookbooks gives elaborate instructions (which I have not tried) for feeding the starter for several days until it grows, allowing the fermentation which creates the sourdough flavor to develop. Only then is the larger volume of flour added to create the dough to bake into bread.

Jesus spoke to a crowd eager for healing, for justice, for holiness, for relationship with God. He told them that the kingdom of heaven was not what they were expecting. Of the images Jesus used to tell people about the kingdom of heaven, his use of bread seems the most central to our experience as Christians. Bread is composed of wheat, water, and salt—elements of creation—combined with human craft. Wine is made of grapes and human craft. There are hidden ingredients: time, heat, fermentation. These unseen elements point to God’s presence, to the kingdom.

Bread is at the center of the sacramental life of the church. At the heart of Anglican theology is Incarnation: our sacramental rite EMBODIES meaning because our ritual actions touch our bodies and our hearts.

If asked, many of us would say that there are seven sacraments. And if you look at our prayer book, you will find a list of seven. But only two were instituted by Jesus: Baptism and Communion. One of my great professors at Seminary describes this paradox by saying that there are “Two sacraments which are seven in number.” Some theologians would say that the one and only sacrament is Jesus Christ: the bread of life, the true vine, the source of living water.

God uses material things to convey grace, so the sacraments are instruments of grace, not memorials of a grace-filled event in the distant past. Material things have an enormous power to carry meaning, and much of the power of our sacraments is that they are basic to our lives as human beings: washing, eating and drinking. God is revealed to us in ways that are deeply real to us in our humanity. There is nothing that needs to be explained about these symbols, because at the heart of them is an action we understand. And we can rely on the sacraments to bless us and bring us into the presence of God not because WE do something, but because GOD does something.

Tertullian wrote beautifully about our humanity and the blessing of sacrament, in the 2nd century, from the Roman province of Carthage in Africa. Listen for his description of Baptism and Communion: The flesh is the hinge on which salvation depends. When the soul is dedicated to God, it is the flesh which actually makes it capable of such dedication. For surely the flesh is washed that the soul may be cleansed. The flesh is anointed that the soul may be consecrated. The flesh is sealed that the soul may be fortified. The flesh is overshadowed by the imposition of hands that the soul may be illumined by the Spirit. The flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ that the soul may fatten on God.

Until the 9th century, the Church in the west used leavened bread. Eventually the bread became “different” and unlike what was eaten at an ordinary meal. Thus there was a loss of a sense that at the root of the sacraments are ordinary human acts. The Eastern Orthodox church still uses leavened bread, and many western churches are reclaiming it as a symbol that embodies the meaning of blessing in our ordinary, human, lives. Communion is a sacrament of human eating and human drinking.

Today, in a departure from our usual practice, and in honor of today’s Gospel, Reverend Beth will be consecrating leavened bread for Holy Communion. This is the same type of bread that we use at All Saints Chapel on the campus at Seminary.

And I would like to invite another change from the usual. I invite you to consider putting aside the practice of intinction for today, and drink from the chalice when you come to the high altar (unless you have a communicable illness). Our Lord said “Take, eat” and “Drink this, all of you.” He did not say “Take and dunk”—in that we are neither eating nor drinking. This is an invitation, not a requirement. Please do as you feel moved to do. Communion in the chapel is reserved for intinction, as usual.

When we pray the words of Jesus: “Thy kingdom come,” we are not praying for the coming of the kingdom in the future. We are praying that the kingdom come into our lives. At some level, we know that what is deepest, what is most powerful for our immortal souls, is hidden. And yet—it is present. God lives in us, and among us.

The great blessing of our sacraments is they embody the truth that creation bears the possibility of encounter with God. God is present in the bread, God is present in the wine. And after Communion the “real presence” is IN US. We become tabernacles of the Body of Christ. And, as a community we ARE the Body of Christ. St. Augustine said: “behold your mystery. Become what you see”

Do we understand this? Do we?
• Do we understand that we are blessed in our ordinary humanity?
• Do we believe that God took on human life out of bottomless love?
• Do we feel at the deepest level that our daily failings and struggles, our human limitations, do not keep us from the love of God?
• Do we embrace being called into community so that together we can reach into the hidden realms to touch the love at the center of Creation?

The Apostle Paul understood, and he lived it. Listen again to his words: In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Sermons

Hidden in the Bread

Anne Emry St. Matthew's Episcopal Church July 27, 2008

Anne Emry
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church
July 27, 2008