Someone asked me a few days ago if it would be possible to schedule one more event here at St. Augustine’s today. “NO” I told them. “We’re full up.”
“Many things can be true at once.” Today especially so.
The secular calendar tells us that today is Veterans’ Day.
The liturgical calendar tells us that today is the first Sunday of the Seven-Week Advent—hence the blue candle behind the altar, hence the empty branches and absence of flowers, hence the dry leafless tree in the narthex behind you.
The St. Augustine’s calendar tells us that it’s Stewardship Kickoff/ “Bread of Life” Sunday. Yesterday we had a dozen people in the parish hall filling paper gift bags with loaves of homemade bread, over one hundred twenty five of them. And now, around the altar, there is a loaf of bread for every household in the parish. To all of you who helped make this happen: THANK YOU.
Like the bread, in all its different textures and flavors, our readings this morning are rich and savory…there’s a lot going on here. In these final scenes from the book of Ruth (the Reader’s Digest version), Naomi sends Ruth to seduce Boaz (well, she does!) and then we jump ahead to the ending, learning along the way that Boaz and Ruth’s son Obed is the father of Jesse, himself the father of David. So this is where the Davidic line gets underway, as it were. (Our “Jesse Tree” in the narthex is filled with symbols of Jesus’ ancestors, as a seasonal reminder of those who preceded him.)
This is a story of two women, both widowed and far from hometown and family connections, and Ruth doubly disconnected as a Moabite—the people of Moab were historic enemies of Judah and Israel. So already there’s something strange happening, as Ruth come back to Bethlehem (which means “House of Bread”, by the way) with Naomi. There, gathering grain in the fields, she catches Boaz’s attention. But Ruth is no passive heroine, nor is Naomi any shrinking violet. They are both agents in their own lives, insofar as they are able. The story of Ruth is a story of strong, discerning, wise women, who take matters into their own hands and discover God’s vision and purpose working in and through them and their children’s children.
In the letter to the Hebrews, we hear the writer reflect on the subject and content of our faith, as followers of Jesus. The writer wants to answer the question: Who is this Jesus, and why does it matter? So today we hear the words: “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
Sin has been dealt with, once for all, it is no longer part of the equation. This doesn’t mean that sin does not happen any more—obviously it does, and often. But rather, the author insists, that the power of sin to separate human beings from one another, and from God, does not have the last word on the subject. And so this mysterious Second Coming of Christ, which we anticipate in the season of Advent, is not an occasion for fear or anxiety, as those who obsess with the so-called Rapture would make it. The fear-mongers and peddlers of catastrophe and immanent disaster have got it entirely wrong, from the perspective of generations of Christian faith and tradition. Rather, it is the long-desired consummation of all things in God for which we long, and so our prayer in the Advent season is always “Come, Lord Jesus.”
As I prepared for today, along with many others of you, I was in the kitchen baking bread. As I stood at the kitchen counter “wrestling the challah into submission” this week, I realized there is something absolutely primordial about all this, something so very earthy and essential. No baker also grows the grain and grinds it to flour himself, herself…maybe once upon a time, but not now. And even the farmer (small or factory) does not make the grain grow—that’s God’s business. It’s all connected, all related, one participant to another.
One of the earliest eucharistic prayers we have comes from a document known as the Didache (which means “Teaching”, supposedly that of the Twelve Apostles.) This prayer was adapted into a communion hymn (#302) that we will sing this morning. It contains the lines “As grain once scattered on the hillside/ was in this broken bread made one/So from all lands thy Church be gathered/ into thy kingdom by thy Son.” The bread is a potent symbol of us—our life together.
No wonder Jesus uses bread to talk about the deep things of God. No wonder that it is in table companionship (lit, “with bread”) with others that he demonstrates what he means by all of this “Kingdom of God” stuff.
Today’s gospel is not about bread as such, but it is (as ever) about the Kingdom of God—how very close at hand it is, and yet how easy it is to overlook or miss altogether. First, notice where we are: In Jerusalem, in the temple, the heart of the religious and cultural system in which Jesus and his followers lived. And we are in the last days of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry. The palm branches and Hosanna to the Son of David and the march down from the Mount of Olives happened back in chapter 11. We’re almost at the end of the story, just as we begin a new cycle of the calendar—welcome to Advent!
He is telling his followers to be aware (beware) of the recognized religious leaders. They like to be seen committing pious acts in public, to be thought well of by others in consequence. They have given over too much of themselves, in the desire to be respectable, and have given too little of themselves (for all that they are blessed with many gifts) to the foolishness of God’s call on their lives. They’ve played safe and courted popular opinion—and they have received what they wanted. And, says Jesus, they have missed the point altogether.
Then we see this unnamed widow—like Ruth and Naomi, someone who is extremely vulnerable, living “on the edge” of that society. Having no male to protect her (neither husband nor son, evidently) she is very much on the margins in that time and culture. She comes to “the treasury”, a series of strongboxes in the temple precincts, into which one could place one’s contribution. She has so very little, not even enough to for anyone else to take notice of her.
But Jesus sees her. He sees the two copper coins, the very little that is her everything. He notices, and says to the others “Look there—do you see? All these who have much, have given only what was easy. She who has almost nothing—she has given it all.” Jesus sees her, and knows that he also will give it all away, even his very life, before long. She is doing now, what he will do very soon.
Jesus criticizes the religious and political systems which consume and destroy people, and yet he allows himself to be destroyed by those systems, in order to show once and for all, that the systems of this world will not be able to overcome the power of God’s dominion. They try—Lord knows they continue to try, to this day—but they shall not have the last word. In the Easter event, life and death and life-out-of-death are reconfigured, declaring that day and forever that God’s love is stronger than anything else there is. Stronger than the powers and principalities; stronger than sin and death and destruction; stronger than our own stubbornness and resistance.
In his giving of himself, on that last night in the Upper Room, Jesus took bread, and blessed it and broke it and shared it. He himself would be broken on the Cross before many hours had passed; he was showing his friends “This is what it looks like, to follow me. You may be broken as well, by the powers and principalities. But your breaking shall be for many, and great good will come forth from it.”
We are called to be bread for one another. As Jesus is the Living Bread that comes from heaven and gives life to the world—which is not a mathematical formula for “come to church plus receive communion equals everything will be wonderful and easy all the time”—so we are called to be transformed by his grace into sources of life and nourishment and joy for those to whom we go. Most of whom will never enter these doors.
Today is the beginning of our annual pledge campaign. You are being asked to share of your substance—money, and time, and skills, for the work of this congregation. But ultimately what we do here is not about buildings and budgets and programs. Those are some of the tools by which we do the work of being Jesus’ followers.
But all of it—all of it—must be connected somehow into our own conversion, as we are transformed into the Body of Christ, the holy ordinary everyday imperfect people whom God has invited to be companions on the journey of faith together. If we are not being so converted, day by day and over our whole lifetime, then we too have missed the point.
“Com-panion.” With bread. With food, nourishment for body and soul and mind, as we seek to love God with all that we are, and to love our neighbors as part of our own selves. What we do here, in this building, on Sundays and at other times, cannot be an end in itself. It is rather the gathering of the scattered grain, so that we may be ground together, and moistened with the water of baptism, and baked by the fire of the Holy Spirit into a common loaf, to be blessed and broken and shared. That is why we are here. That is what we do here.
Please pray with me.
Blessed are you, Lord our God, creator of the universe. You bring forth grain from the ground, to nourish our bodies and strengthen our hearts. Bless now this bread, which your earth has provided and human hands have made. Make it a sign of your abundant extravagant love for your creation, that we may see in it all that you have given to us. Give us grateful and generous hearts, that we may share of all that we have, and all that we are, for your glory and the good of your kingdom. We ask all this through Jesus, our divine companion. Amen.
