This sermon is lovingly dedicated to my confirmation class. One of the things that I have appreciated most about the Episcopal Church, is the sense of mystery that surrounds much of what we do… I am grateful for the sense that we do not rush toward easy answers; and some days we acknowledge that perhaps there isn’t an answer, at least not an answer that we can know in ways that we “know” other things. I suppose it is a gift as well as a frustration sometimes when we say things are “mystery”… in our society most people want answers, they want to be told what to do… we acknowledge that answers are never easy, if we can understand them at all.
One of the things that we do, that has a great deal of mystery surrounding it, is the Eucharist. Eucharist means “Thanksgiving; certainly, giving thanks is part of what happens when we gather around the table… but giving thanks is what you and I do; what is it that Jesus does as we gather around the table?
“On the night before he died for us, our Lord Jesus Christ took
bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and
gave it to his disciples, and said, “Take, eat: This is my Body,
which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.” We hear these words at every Eucharist that we celebrate… Jesus takes bread, blesses the bread, breaks the bread and then gives the bread… it is what he did at the last Supper with his disciples, and what he does in today’s reading from Luke’s gospel… and it is in these four simple actions done to bread, that the disciples recognize him as the risen Christ…
It seems so simple… take, bless, break, give… four simple actions that have become the center of how we worship and how we interact in the world…
These simple actions are more than just about bread; Jesus identifies himself with the actions as well… he asks us to “Do this in remembrance of me” … When we do this, when we take bread, bless bread, break bread and then give bread… it is not simply a way for us to remember Jesus and his actions… although it is that too; when we do this together, we are joining ourselves to him, to each other and to those who have done this same thing over the centuries; it becomes part of our community’s memory and action over time; in some mysterious sense, we are joined with those first disciples at that table, so it is not just a “historical” remembering, but becoming part of something much bigger than ourselves; our words and actions transcend space and time, and the reality we are a part of is God’s reality… and yes, it is a mystery…
One of the holiest moments of the celebration of the Eucharist, is the moment when the bread is broken… the symbolism of the broken bread is, I believe, central to who we are, and what we believe about Jesus…
Brokenness, is at least in part, the foundation upon which the church of Christ is built. Jesus identifies himself with the bread, making it into his body because he knows that his body will be broken; on a cross on Golgotha his body, mind and spirit were horribly broken… and that body, mind and spirit, that person of Jesus, was indeed given for the reconciliation of the entire world…
Those actions of love however, did not stop on that day; as Easter people, we know the hope of resurrection, we know that the brokenness that Jesus suffered was ultimately made whole on Easter morning… and we live in the hope that our own brokenness and our own death will also be made whole as his ws and as he is.
But bread and Jesus are not the only ones who are taken, blessed, broken and given; these simple actions are also the church’s actions… the church, the body of the risen Christ, is, like Jesus, like the bread of Eucharist, taken and blessed by God, broken by all manner of things, and then given to others… brokenness is central to who you and I are, and in so many ways, our brokenness, our suffering, is what connects us to others…
Everyone here knows they are broken in some way, even if they cannot admit the details… we have all been victims of our own bad choices; relationships gone bad, addiction, health issues, loss, financial insecurity… many of these and more are part of our ordinary lives… daily, we make decisions and choices that place barriers between us and the people we love… daily, we make choices that lead us toward idolatry of some fashion, be it power over another, money, sex or some other choice that diminishes us and our relationships in the long run…
We all do it… we are all broken in these ways… and yet, we are taken and blessed by God, in all of our brokenness, and then we are given back to the world…
Why are we given to the world? Well, the simple answer is, because Jesus was given to the world… not really all that simple… I know…
But you and I are the body of Christ in the world… and so we are the ones who go out and continue to do his work in the world… the work of forgiving and reconciling; the work of healing; the work of restoring justice; the work of peace… it all sounds so hard and it’s tempting to think that maybe Jesus has made some cosmic mistake about choosing us because holy crap, Jesus wants me to what?
But he has gone before us to show us what to do… he has gone before us to show us that even though we are broken, the promise of Easter shows us that we can be whole again… and at least for some, the brokenness we experience is part of what can make us whole again… certainly those who have experienced healing through programs like Alcoholics Anonymous know that their addiction and recovery are the very things that help another recover and find a path toward wholeness…
The church is no different… when we come together, and perhaps most especially when we are out in the world, our actions toward others are meant to reflect Easter hope and Easter joy… and the good news as well as the bad news, is that you and I are it… we are the ones whom Jesus has sent, even though we may not feel like we are worthy or up to the task… Congratulations, and welcome to disciplehood.
The disciples knew Jesus in the breaking of the bread… Eucharist is part of the radical love fest that God has asked you and I to be a part of. In every celebration of Eucharist we are being asked to be broken apart, to be changed… and in the simple act of taking the body and blood of Jesus into our bodies, we are made whole. It is my hope that we shall know Jesus as we break bread today… and perhaps we will also come to know ourselves and each other as well, in that holy mystery where bread is taken, blessed, broken and given… just as Jesus was… and just as you and I are… may we find his wholeness in our brokenness and may we know him in the breaking of the bread. Alleluia, Christ is risen!