Communion Sunday August 2, 2009 “Who’s In the Driver’s Seat?” Reverend Michael D. Powell John 6:24-35

Last Sunday was an important learning experience for me. For one thing, I’d never been at my house on a Sunday morning. I didn’t know what it felt like to sleep in or to sit on the deck. Nor did I know what the neighbors do on Sunday morning. In my world, everyone is in church, but there’s another whole world out there that I know nothing of. Oh yeah, and another thing I learned, you guys can get along very well without me! Now, I’m not knocking what I do and I’m not about to give up my Sunday job, but I was thrilled with the worship experience you shared in my absence. Fred taped it and Anni and I watched it. It was a beautiful worship service and I thank all of you who participated in helping to make it happen. It’s good not to be overly needed, to know that quality worship happens when the preacher disappears.

Now, to be honest, I want you to need me. I want you to appreciate me. I want you to miss me when I’m gone. It feels good to be needed. It feels good to be recognized and appreciated for the gifts and the graces we have. There's a point, however, where if we need to be needed, a problem develops. This need creates a dependency that sooner or later becomes a burden on ourselves and also suppresses the leadership and spiritual growth of those whom we've encouraged to need and rely on us instead of recognizing that, ultimately, our need is to rely on God alone. This is scriptural.

The background of this morning's scripture is that Jesus had miraculously fed a huge crowd of 5000 people in the wilderness. But now Jesus has disappeared from sight and the disciples are looking for him. When they finally find him he says, "You're looking for me because I gave you bread to eat, but the true bread is spiritual, and comes from God."

We're here this morning to celebrate the identity of Jesus Christ in our sacrament of Holy Communion. In this sacrament we feed on him in our hearts by faith, acknowledging our belief that his spiritual presence is the Bread of Life that nourishes our souls. But Jesus, the man of flesh, has disappeared from our sight just as surely as he had disappeared from his disciples' sight after the feeding of the 5000. Jesus says a few chapters later that it is to our advantage that he disappear from our sight, for only after he is gone will we come to know his presence through the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts. I think I can illustrate what I’m trying to say by telling about a dream.

Some of you know that I’m a dreamer. I believe in the power of dreams and I’ve remembered and written down quite a few of my dreams over the years. I had a couple of significant life and death type dreams during my illness, but the one I want to share with you this morning actually happened years ago, after I’d come home from a week at “Workshop,” the Senior High Leadership camp that Chris and I used to do together, which Robert participated in, and which Chalice went to all four of her high school years.

There are a lot of details that I won’t go into, but the essence of it is that in the dream I was driving a bunch of kids around in a big purple van. It wasn't my van, but I took them for a wonderful ride and everyone was happy. Suddenly, mysteriously, I disappeared, and that was the end of the dream. I woke up with an uneasy feeling, because the kids were depending on me as their driver, but I was gone. As I woke up they had not yet discovered my absence. They were just sitting there in the van, waiting for it to start up again.

There are certain parts of the dream that made sense immediately, because I recognized some of the kids. They were church campers, kids I'd just spent a week with at Suttle Lake. Those who speak the symbolic language of dreams refer to "vehicles of consciousness." A van full of church kids driven by a preacher is not all that tough to figure out. It's a vehicle of group spiritual consciousness, and I'm the driver, entrusted with the responsibility for helping to move us toward our destination, which is God-consciousness. That's a big part of what I do at camp. That's the role I play. I'm one of the drivers. But, it's not my van! That's an important point, which is symbolized by the color purple. Purple is the color of royalty, of power and authority. It's a symbol of the passion of Jesus Christ. The purple van, in other words, is the Body of Christ, and we're all in it together. It represents spiritual community.

Now for the disappearing part. I was troubled by that until I began to realize what it symbolized. Those of you who are teachers and parents know what I'm talking about when I say that it's in the nature of our jobs to disappear, to work ourselves out of a job. We're entrusted with the responsibility for driving the van for awhile, but kids grow up. If we've done our jobs right, they learn to drive for themselves. We have a sacred charge to share our knowledge and our skills, to keep them safe and help steer them along the road to maturity. Sooner or later, however, we are going to disappear. We have to disappear in order for those entrusted to our care to realize that the power to navigate comes from within; it's something they must learn for themselves. In terms of spiritual community, it means that the power and the glory belongs to God alone, and that God speaks to them through the Holy Spirit who dwells in their hearts.

We're here this morning because the Holy Spirit comes to each one of us in unique and personal ways. We’re here looking for Jesus, the one who feeds us, the great “I Am,” who is the “Bread of Life.” I’m just the preacher, and I took last Sunday off. That was a good thing, because it gave someone else a chance to drive. The job of a pastor, like that of a Christian education director, a Sunday school teacher or the chairperson of a work area committee is to help drive the van of spiritual community for awhile, but it’s not our van, and our destination is always the same, to help move us all closer to Jesus Christ, God and the Holy Spirit within who feeds us with the Bread of Life. Each of us, at one time or another, in one way or another, is entrusted with the responsibility of driving the van for others. My prayer is that, by the grace of God, all of us who are entrusted with leadership positions in this church can help facilitate ways to bring us all closer to our ultimate destination, which is a personal awareness of God's presence, the conviction that we have a charge to keep, and the empowerment to serve others and to do ministry in Christ's name.

In the ultimate sense, God is the spiritual unity which exists between van, passenger and driver. We are all a part of the Body of Christ and the closer we get to our destination the more any sense of ourselves as personal drivers tends to disappear so that only the unity of Van-Consciousness remains.

May we be nourished by the Bread of Life, those sacramental moments of unity and awareness that come to us as we feed on him in our hearts by faith. Through Christ we pray. Amen.