World Communion Sunday October 3, 2010 "The Miracle of Interbeing" Reverend Michael D. Powell Matthew 15:32-38

Our scripture this morning recounts the miracle of Jesus feeding four thousand people. It is widely understood as a prototype of our sacrament of Holy Communion, because Jesus fed everyone, and there was still food left over to share. Grace abounds! Miracles happen. We are fed and, like the disciples of old, we are sent out to feed others in Christ’s name.

 I believe in miracles, but we have a way of thinking about the miraculous that limits, actually restricts miracles to the realm of the extraordinary, which therefore blinds us to just how miraculous our so-called ordinary, everyday lives are! I believe in ordinary miracles.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

Even though Thich Nhat Hanh is a Buddhist, he considers our Christian sacrament of Holy Communion a miracle, and on this World Communion Sunday, when people all over the world are celebrating their interdependence as One Body in Christ, it’s appropriate to use a word that Thich Nhat Hanh has coined, the word “Interbeing,” which describes how everything is a part of every other thing.

As we join with others of every nation and ethnic group this morning in sharing these ordinary elements of bread and grape juice, we are celebrating a miracle. We call them “common elements,” because they’re familiar, but there’s nothing common about them. Before these elements were bread and juice, they were grains of wheat,

and grapes.

Before that they were seeds, nourished in the soil, watered by the rain, warmed by the sun. Someone planted the seeds, and weeded the plants. They were harvested by workers who then transported them to where they were processed into bread and juice, which was then packaged and transported to distribution points, then temporarily stored on shelves from which they were purchased.

This morning these so-called “common elements” are unwrapped as bread, poured out as juice, placed on an altar with our prayers, and shared as the Body of Christ.

As Thich Nhat Hanh describes it: “If we allow ourselves to touch our bread deeply, we become reborn, because our bread is life itself. Eating it deeply, we touch the sun, the clouds, the earth, and everything in the cosmos. We touch life, and we touch the Kingdom of God.” (p. 31, Living Buddha, Living Christ)

I was raised a Methodist and, like all Protestants, I was taught that the sacrament of Holy Communion is a symbolic ritual, as opposed to what Roman Catholics believe, which is called “Transubstantiation.” According to transubstantiation, when the priest blesses the elements of bread and wine, they are mystically, and literally, transformed into the body and the blood of Christ. I was taught that the theological choice was between a belief in transubstantiation, the literal body and blood, or a symbolic ritual. I never realized there was an alternative until I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s explanation, which he calls the Mindfulness of Interbeing: “When we are truly present, dwelling deeply in the present moment, we can see that the bread and the wine are really the Body and Blood of Christ and the [pastor’s] words are truly the words of the Lord. The body of Christ is the body of God, the body of ultimate reality, the ground of all existence. We do not have to look anywhere else for it. It resides deep in our own being. The Eucharistic rite encourages us to be fully aware so that we can touch the body of reality in us. Bread and wine are not symbols. They contain the reality, just as we do.” [p. 32, Living Buddha, Living Christ]

And so, on this World Communion Sunday, like the four thousand who were fed by Jesus so long ago, we are once again celebrating the miracle of interbeing. Even as the bread and the juice contain all the elements that ever went into them, so each of us is likewise the product of all the experiences of life that have brought us to this moment in time, and we are also members one of another, celebrating our unity and interdependence as brothers and sisters of a common family, neighbors in a global neighborhood. All this is made manifest in our sacrament of Holy Communion.

Breaking bread together is an expression of how we have been fed, and it is also an expression of how we are all interdependent. An important part of being nourished, strengthened and fed ourselves is that we are also inspired and empowered to reach out and feed others. Frederick Buechner once quipped that our faith in Christ simply means that we know who to thank for our blessings. But it doesn’t stop with thanking God. It starts with thanking God, and then proceeds by taking the awareness of blessing out beyond these walls to share with others who are hungry to experience the same kind of awareness, the same kind of blessing, the same kind of gratitude and since of service. To my mind, the Body of Christ includes every child of God. I love the Strathdee song, Draw the Circle Wide. It expresses the truth that Mother Teresa once observed when she said, “The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small.” [quoted by Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart, p. 354]

And so, as we go from this place of worship today, we will carry the blessings out into the neighborhood, and we will be listening for how God’s word is expressed in the perceptions of our neighbors. We are connected simply by virtue of our interbeing. We share in a proximity of streets, sidewalks and parks, many of our kids go to the same schools, we shop in the same stores. We as a church have opened our doors through events like the Financial Peace University, Parents Night Out and the After School Mentoring Program, and we’ve sought to take our programs beyond these walls by sponsoring block parties and neighborhood picnics. We obviously share a concern for safety, simply because we’re family, sharing the circle of this neighborhood. But how might we be more intentionally inter-related? What are the neighbor’s perceptions of our role in the community? What else might we be able to do to expand the family circle? We’ll be asking those questions, and we’ll be listening to the answers.

Here’s an important statistic: 83% of adult Christians today report that they made their faith commitment before the age of 18. What that means is that the older a person gets without having someone plant that spiritual seed, the less likely they are to ever know the blessings of a church home and family, the less likely they are to learn the blessings of being servants and stewards of God’s creation. I believe that all kids start out with a natural spiritual sensitivity and hunger, but unless there are some spiritual seeds planted, it doesn’t take long for them to become jaded and skeptical. It takes a church making children a priority. It takes people teaching Sunday school, volunteering for Parents Night Out, after school mentoring and counseling youth events. It means putting kids in the budget. Kids are the ultimate expression of interbeing. We need them in order to be what God is calling us to be, and they need us in order to grow into the people God is calling them to be.

Many of the kids in our neighborhood have no church affiliation. In fact, some of us have kids who have left the church, but I have hope that many of them will return. It doesn’t always happen, of course, but I’ve seen many kids drop out through their college and young adult years, only to return when they have kids of their own. Why? I think I know the answer . . . it’s because of communion, in the broadest sense of the word. This is where they have been nourished and fed. It’s where they have experienced community, and being part of a spiritual family. And they return because they want their own kids to experience the communion of the Body of Christ.

I pray that we can help spread the Good News that Morningside is a place where miracles happen, where people are welcomed, healed, strengthened and fed. Miracles are happening this morning, all over the world. My prayer is that we draw our family circle wide enough to include all God’s children. Thanks be to God. Amen.