11^th Sunday after Pentecost August 16, 2009 “Living on the EDGE” Reverend Michael D. Powell John 6:51-58

Who can tell me what the theme of VBS has been this past week? It was called Camp EDGE, which is an acronym for Experiencing, Discovering God Everywhere.” Now, we all know God is everywhere, but actually experiencing that reality is not as easy as it sounds. “Everywhere” is just so, you know, ordinary! It’s easier to experience God on mountaintops, in awesome sunrises and sunsets that take your breath away, in the majesty of mighty storms. You know what I mean – things with a little pizzazz, a little punch. Experiencing and discovering God everywhere is just so ordinary, so “white bread,” as they say.

Which brings us to our scripture: "I AM the bread of life," Jesus says. But, not only the bread! He also says he’s the Light, the Good Shepherd, the Vine, The Way, the Truth and the Life. That’s more like it! These are all what scholars refer to the great “I Am” sayings of the Gospel of John. Through them the Messianic identity of Jesus as the Son of God is asserted. All of these descriptions assert the essential unity of Jesus with his Heavenly Father and, just to make sure we don't miss the point, the whole bread thing is spelled out: "I am the Bread that comes down from heaven." A taste of heaven! Can you imagine that?

Well, a lot of people couldn't. Bread is something you eat. Bread tastes good; it gives your body strength and nourishment. We know what bread is. You can see, touch and taste bread. Jesus does not look like bread. People were confused, so he explains. "This living bread is my flesh, which I will give for the world." That's about as obvious as he can make it. He's talking sacramentally.

Of course, we get it today. We’ve had two thousand years to digest what the Gospel of John is asserting, that this is metaphorical language. But the way John tells the story, these words only made people grumble. "How can he say things like that?" they ask. "We know this guy. We know his folks. His father, Joseph, is a carpenter. Where's his son get off saying that he's the Bread of Life?" You know the old cliché - familiarity breeds contempt. I suspect we sometimes have the same problem.

Anyone who appreciates a fine meal knows the importance of presentation, and the Jesus of John’s gospel is apparently having a little problem with presentation this morning. He's saying that this meal he serves up is heavenly, that in him and through him we experience and discover God everywhere, as the fullness of Life, as a touch of heaven on earth. But for some folks this fare is just a little too familiar, a little too folksy to stomach. They want a richer diet, something for a more sophisticated palate, something more majestic. Jesus as the Way and the Truth, or as the Resurrection and the Life, now that’s a little more like it, but Jesus as daily bread is a bit common. The problem is in the familiarity of the presentation. If Jesus insists on being the bread of life, at least it could be a magnificent loaf of sacramental communion bread, preferable round, on a gold or silver plate covered with white linen and marked with a cross. But it’s as though Jesus is presenting himself as one of the Dagwood sandwiches that you see in the comic strips, white bread with onions and pickles and three kinds of cheese all spilling out the sides. It’s just not very churchy! But, a Dagwood sandwich is perfect for the point I want to make. Every meal is sacramental.

We all know that God is here and now, in this time and this place. We know that sacred life is continually shining forth from the familiar and the ordinary, but mostly we're blind to it, aren't we? Often we don't really see the sacred within the familiar until we have what’s called a “S.E.E.”, a Significant Emotional Experience. A Significant Emotional Experience opens our eyes. Suddenly we realize just how present Christ is in the most common of circumstances, the most taken-for-granted situations and relationships. Suddenly our eyes are opened to this sacred Bread of Life, which is presented in the most ordinary and familiar of ways.

Max Lucado is an author who was serving as a missionary in Rio de Janeiro when he had just such a Significant Emotional Experience. He and his wife were having dinner with another missionary family while their little girls aged two and three, were playing in the front yard. Suddenly the elder of the two came running, panic-stricken, into the house crying, "Jenna is in the pool." They all ran out and the baby was quickly rescued from the water, simultaneously choking, crying, and coughing. Max held her little body close as he wept tears of gratitude and thanked God for the precious life of his daughter which had been so nearly lost. Later he reflected on that experience:

"Because of it I came face to face with one of the underground's slyest agents - the agent of familiarity. His commission from the black throne room is clear, and fatal: Take nothing from your victim; cause him only to take everything for granted. His goal is nothing less that to take what is most precious to us and make it appear most common. To say that this agent of familiarity breeds contempt is to let him off easy. Contempt is just one of his offspring. He also sires broken hearts, wasted hours, and an insatiable desire for more. He's an expert in robbing the sparkle and replacing it with the drab. He invented the yawn and put the hum in humdrum. And his strategy is deceptive.

"He won't steal your salvation; he'll just make you forget what it was like to be lost. You'll grow accustomed to prayer and thereby not pray. Worship will become commonplace and study optional. With the passing of time he'll infiltrate your heart with boredom and cover the cross with dust so that you'll be 'safely' out of the reach of change. Score one for the agent of familiarity.

"Nor will he steal your home from you; he'll do something far worse. He'll paint it with a familiar coat of drabness. He'll replace evening gowns with bathrobes, nights on the town with evenings in the recliner, and romance with routine. He'll scatter the dust of yesterday over the wedding pictures in the hallway until they become a memory of another couple in another time. He won't take your children; he'll just make you too busy to notice them. His whispers to procrastinate are seductive. There is always next summer to coach the team, next month to go to the lake, and next week to teach Johnny how to pray. He'll make you forget that the faces around your table will soon be at tables of their own. Hence, books will go unread, games will go unplayed, hearts will go unnurtured, and opportunities will go ignored; all because the poison of the ordinary has deadened your senses to the magic of the moment. Before you know it, the little face that brought tears to your eyes in the delivery room has become, perish the thought, common. A common kid sitting in the back seat of your van as you whiz down the fast lane of life. Unless something changes, unless something wakes you up, that common kid will become a common stranger." (1) Max Lucado, God Came Near, pp. 152-3

That story is food for thought, food for the heart. Life is a journey, and we need strength for the journey. Do you find yourself running on empty sometimes, bogged down in the ordinariness of life? Does your vision begin to blur, like your blood sugar is low, so that you're not really seeing, not really experiencing the fullness of life? Are you Experiencing and Discovering God Everywhere? If not, maybe it's time to eat. The food is all around us. It's in the people who sit beside you, in the light that shines through these stained glass windows, in the very breath of our bodies. The Bread of Life is in the ordinary things, the daily miracles that we take for granted.

I'll close with these words of Janet Crawley: "God of the way, you are the road we travel, and the sign we follow; you are bread for the journey, and the wine of arrival. Guide us as we follow your way, holding on to each other, reaching out to your beloved world. And when we stray, seek us out and find us, set our feet upon the path again, and lead us safely home." Hear our prayer, O Lord. Help us to Experience and to Discover you Everywhere. In Christ we pray. Amen.