Prop 14 (B) + Dependence on God + 8.12.18

(cute necklace idea from site above)

Melissa Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(2 Samuel 18:5–9, 15, 31–33; Ps. 130; Ephesians 4:25–5:2; John 6:35, 41–51)

Kate Bowler’s book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved (Random House, 2018) tells the true story of a young religion professor’s encounter with terminal cancer. The author’s specialty is in the traditions that believe strongly in faith healing, or in the idea that if you have enough faith and pray, you will be healed. Of course all of us Christians believe in faith healing. We pray for those we love who are sick and rejoice when those prayers are answered. We have a Healing Eucharist every Wednesday at 5 PM here at All Saints for this purpose. The difference is found in how we respond when something does not happen as we hope. Those who believe that the strength of your faith is what leads to your healing begin to look askance at a person who is simply not healing. This was such a challenging journey for Bowler, who still has terminal cancer. Years later, she has not died, but at least, last I heard, nor was she healed, and that is the trick. What do we do when God doesn’t answer our prayers in the way we had hoped? What do we do with disease? Or other instances of human frailty or whim? Or simply a person deciding that they don’t want to put up with an insurrectionist leader, even if he is the king’s son, as happened in our reading from the Second book of Samuel today?

David was the apple of God’s eye- his name means beloved! But as we have heard in the last couple of weeks’ readings, he could also misbehave and in fact be downright bad. He had to learn how to live in God’s love, just as many of us do, albeit in much less dramatic lessons. So David is beloved, despite all of his problems. But David’s son Absalom is not spared. Absalom had been staging a revolt and that was just not done. However David asked for him to be left alive. Even when outright rebelling against him, all David wanted was for his son to live, and live abundantly, as would any parent. But Absalom is literally cut down. Now, this is enough to shake anyone’s faith. And it is enough to make David feel that God is punishing him. But despite what happened with his infant son before, I tend to believe that punishment of that sort just isn’t God’s way.

But to truly feel that, we have to lean into God. It’s a paradox, but stay with me.

So I ask you, what kind of bread is your sustenance? Last week, during the little “children’s chat” at the church we visited in Waco, Texas, the priest asked the kids what they felt about the word “bread” being used to describe a person, namely, Jesus. One kid said “Bread’s not a Name!” very indignantly. And it made us all smile.
When Jesus used this term “I am the Bread of Life,” he clearly was not confused about whether we was actually made out of wheat flour and a rising agent, nor did he actually think bread was a name. Instead, he was referring to the fact that in Middle Eastern cultures of the time, bread was literally the staff of life. Just as it continues to be in other parts of the world and rice or other starches often are in many other parts of the world, bread was the one food that people relied on for the daily energy they needed to continue with the hard work of living. This is why we ask for our daily bread in the Lord’s Prayer.

But Jesus, who knew what it was to fast for forty days or at least a really long time, wanted to remind us that we cannot only be tied to that which physically and materially sustains us for our journey. He wanted us depend on him as spiritual bread. If we only depend on physical bread, it crumbles to ashes in our mouths, just as the manna in the wilderness rotted if too much was gathered for the daily need. Food is key to our daily energy.

But even more than we are drawn to our daily meals, we must hunger for and be drawn to flame of God’s love and justice every day. Now, this is not easy for me to do, someone who quite enjoys a good meal.

But I can try. We can try, right? We can let our first words in the morning be gratitude to God from whom every good thing comes. Or nothing of the work of our hands can truly prosper.

In Ephesians today, we hear about how we can live. We do this not so that we can be saved. Thanks to Jesus, that is already done.  But we treat each other with care so that all can prosper. May we speak this to a society so tied up in individual success and gain that it is blind to the common good. Let us tell the good news of this bread, Jesus’ strengthening presence, which will sustain us, however our prayers are answered. Let us come to the altar and receive not only physical bread and wine but the spiritual bread that sustains and keeps us in everlasting life. Amen.