Bread for the Journey: Loaves Abound!

John 6:1-13
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany 2011


“Wherever the road is turning, there is bread for the journey. Wherever God guides, God provides.”

“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!”

For the past several weeks, the primary focus of our stewardship emphasis has been on our journey, our bread. To be sure, the focus hasn’t been on us alone. We have included “fellow pilgrims on the road” from Cowpens, SC, to Guanajay, Cuba. Along the way, we heard the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, call for friendship and understanding with those who are enemies or opponents, as well as our friends. Along the way, we have included others or “the other.” But the primary focus has been on our journey, our bread.

This morning, our focus changes.
“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” That’s a lot of bread. Why bring it all at once, all on a single Sunday? It’ll go to waste, somebody will say. Well, where it’s going, I can promise you it won’t go to waste. Most of you are familiar with “Loaves & Fishes,” the “mobile food rescue organization” that was founded here in Greenville in 1991. Our own Jon Good is the chair of the Board of Directors. According to “Loaves & Fishes,” 27% of the food produced in the United States every year goes to waste. Do you hear that? More than a fourth of the food that is produced here is thrown away. It turns out that world hunger is not nearly the problem that some people make it out to be. World hunger is not the problem. World waste is the problem.

Last year, Loaves & Fishes rescued more than a million pounds of fresh food that would have gone into the landfill right here in Greenville County. By receiving perishable food items that would otherwise be thrown away by grocery stores, restaurants, caterers, wholesale food distributors, churches and corporate cafeterias and transporting those items quickly to food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and residential programs, community centers, and neighborhood distribution programs, last year Loaves & Fishes provided the food for more than a million meals out of the 27% wasted food in Greenville. Volunteers from Loaves & Fishes are standing by, just waiting to engage in a “mobile rescue” of this bread from our Sanctuary.

They are going to start by taking it to Project Host, “the soup kitchen,” on Academy Street just south and west of Greenville’s thriving downtown, a couple blocks too far west of West End to be fashionable. Last year, Project Host served 78,000 meals to people who otherwise would have gone hungry. Project Host serves 250 meals a day six days a week at lunch time. It also has a program called the Feed Hungry Children Project that serves full evening meals to 191 children at six different centers in Greenville County. I’m told that Project Host uses on average thirty loaves of fresh bread a day, and lately they have had to buy bread because rescue deliveries have not kept pace with their needs. Hearing that made me wonder if all that bread that gets bought off the shelves in the grocery story when the weather forecast predicts snow actually gets eaten? How much of it just gets horded and then thrown away? World hunger is not the problem. World waste is. If we have brought more bread today than Project Host can use in a timely manner, there are food pantries, shelters and residential programs, community centers, and neighborhood distribution programs standing in line behind the soup kitchen. Where this bread is going, it will not go to waste.

It was that way in this morning’s gospel lesson also. At the end of the story Jesus said, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” At the command of Jesus, the disciples became the first “mobile food rescue organization” as they moved among the people and collected what was left over. I’d like to suggest this morning that the point of the story is not just that there was more than enough to go around, as it is commonly preached. The point is also that none of it should be wasted. None of the sowing and the growing and the reaping and the grinding and the mixing and the kneading and the rising and the baking and the blessing and the breaking should be wasted. The problem is not hunger; the problem is waste. “Gather it up,” Jesus says, “so that nothing may be lost.”

The hero in the story, as everyone knows, is a child with a lunch, a lunch not nearly large enough to feed a hillside full of people. But children can be a resourceful lot. One summer day, dozens of First Baptist children were up on Paris Mountain for a children’s ministry activity. When lunchtime came, one little boy discovered that he had lost or forgotten her lunch. Bev asked the children sitting around him, “What do you think we should, do?” Before anyone could answer the question, another little boy sitting right beside took half of his sandwich and placed it in front of the boy who had none. “Here!” said a little girl, as she handed her bag of chips across the table. Another child handed over an apple, and another still fished out some cookies and passed them along. And before you knew it, a child who would have gone hungry had all he could eat and then some. That’s the gospel story. Like the little boy on the mountain in Galilee, the children on Paris Mountain were happy to hand over what they had so that everyone would have something. The problem is not hunger; the problem is hording.

“Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little,” Philip said to Jesus. The gospels tell us that Philip was from Bethsaida, which according to its name, “house of fishing,” was probably a fishing village along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. But Philip must have been in the accounting department of the fishing business. Because when Jesus asks him where to buy bread for these people to eat, Philip immediately estimates how much it will cost instead of answering the question Jesus asked. The deflection of the question from where the available resources are to the question of how much money is at stake is a common problem. Almost all of us get caught between the “two masters,” as Jesus calls them. You “will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth,” Jesus says (Matthew 6:24). You have to choose, Jesus says. Is God your God, or is wealth your god? This morning’s gospel lesson is a reminder that if our first question is always, “How much will it cost?” instead of “How can we make it happen?” then money has become our master. Jesus wasn’t asking Philip about how much it would take. Jesus was asking Philip about the wherewithal of God and God’s people to do it. The problem is not hunger; the problem is greed.

In the way the gospel of John tells the story, Jesus sees the hunger problem before anyone else when he sees the large crowd approaching him. No one has to tell him about their hunger; Jesus sees it coming. It’s not that Jesus is some sort of soothsayer or fortune teller. It’s not a power of prediction or prognostication. It’s a matter of sensitivity to the needs of others. We don’t need prediction or prognostication to know that that people are going hungry in the communities in which you and I live. We don’t need more information to see that people are starving to death on the planet we share with them. We don’t even need more production: most experts agree that the current production capacity of global agriculture is sufficient to feed the current population of the world. The problem is not prognostication or information or insufficient production but insensitivity.

But I would remind you that in this congregation there is a little boy who without even being asked handed over half his sandwich to a child who had none, and there is a little girl who gave her bag of chips and another child who shared an apple and another who passed along a bag of beloved cookies. And like those children on Paris Mountain, this morning you have joined the gospel story by bringing loaves of bread and commitment cards to the Lord’s Table as an expression of the stewardship of your life. It is a journey of sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of others. It is a journey of serving God rather than wealth. It is a journey of generosity rather than hording. And it is a journey of conservation and “mobile rescue” rather than waste.

“Wherever the road is turning, There is bread for the journey. Wherever God guides, God provides.” “Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” Thanks be to God!


“Pass the Word around: Loaves abound!” is from the hymn “Let us Talents and Tongues Employ,” by Fred Kaan, 1975.
“Wherever God guides, God will provide” is from an original composition by Kyle Matthews, 2011.
Photography by Bill Dunlap.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: Nutrition for the Spirit

Matthew 4:1-11
Third Sunday after Epiphany 2011

Two weeks ago, when Carol Stilwell introduced the theme of our 2011 Stewardship Emphasis, “Bread for the Journey,” she said, among other things, that we were going to “have fun.” When’s the last time you heard “stewardship emphasis” and “fun” in the same sentence? To be honest with you, at the time she said it, I didn’t have any more idea than you did that one week later people would be throwing paper airplanes in church and contemplating a ride on the secret slide.

Last Sunday was either a complete breakdown in spiritual decorum around here or it was a sign of life, vitality and vigor in a congregation otherwise known for its seriousness. We take church very seriously around here, and we always have—for 180 years this November, this congregation has been taking church seriously. If you don’t think so, just look around you. Do you see how serious everyone is? This is serious business. We do serious very well around here.

But last Sunday, we showed that in addition to having the capacity to buckle up and buckle down, we also have the capacity to lighten up. This morning, I want to follow up on the lighten up to suggest that on the journey of the stewardship of our lives we must also open up. Open up.

Years ago, I heard Randall Lolley preach a sermon in which he echoed the song of the nuns in “The Sound of Music”: “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Randall Lolley was once the president of a formerly good little Baptist seminary in North Carolina; and he has served in addition as Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Churches of Winston-Salem, Raleigh and Greensboro. Few individuals in the two Carolinas have left more finger prints on moderate Baptist life in these parts than Randall Lolley has. But more of us here this morning know of Maria than we do Randall.

For those of you who are young enough never to have seen the musical or the movie, Maria is a young nun about whom there are many complaints among the other nuns in the abby: “She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee; Her dress has got a tear. She waltzes on her way to Mass And whistles on the stair. And underneath her wimple She has curlers in her hair. I even heard her singing in the abbey. She’s always late for chapel, But her penitence is real. She’s always late for everything Except for every meal. I hate to have to say it, But I very firmly feel Maria’s not an asset to the abbey.” Another nun pipes up to counter the prevailing mood when she sings, “I’d like to say a word on her behalf: Maria makes me laugh.” “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” the nuns sing. “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? . . . . How do you keep a wave upon the sand? Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria? How do hold a moonbeam in your hand?”

The faith we hold on the journey of our lives from God, with God and to God, is in some ways like a moonbeam. The only way to hold it is with your hands wide open. As soon as you make a fist, the moonbeam is no longer in your hand. Our journey is with open hands, not clenched fists. Our hands are open in thanksgiving to God. Our hands are open in welcome and embrace to each other—and to the so-called “other,” as well, whoever that might be. Our hands are open in compassion and generosity. How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Only if you keep your hands wide open. Sometimes when I pray, I pray with my hands tightly clasped as I was taught to pray when I was a child. But sometimes when I pray, I pray with my hands relaxed and open to receive, to accept, to allow God in.

In this morning’s gospel lesson from the fourth chapter of the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus is in the throes of a wilderness experience. Far from family and friends and temple and everything familiar, the wilderness experience of his journey becomes a place of temptation. He was famished, verse 2 tells us, hungry, starving, when the tempter rightly points out to him that he has the power to provide for himself the bread that he needs and wants to satisfy his hunger. All you need to do, the tempter says, is to “command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

Remember, now, this is the Jesus who will turn water into wine, who will turn five barley loaves and two fish into enough to feed thousands, who will turn the bread and the wine of a Passover meal into a new covenant. The insidious power of temptation is that it always invites to do something that we are eminently capable of doing. It always invites to grasp something that will satisfy a certain want or need we have. In the throes of his wilderness journey, Jesus could have reached down, laid hold of a stone, and turned it into the bread he wanted and needed to satisfy his hunger. But instead, he stood with his hands open to receive, to accept, and to allow God. And as he did, he quoted the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

On the journey of our lives, there is the physical bread, the food we need to provide our bodies with the nutrition necessary to survive and to thrive. But there is another kind of bread; it is the food that provide our spirits with the nutrition necessary to survive and to thrive, regardless of our physical circumstances. A malnourished and shriveled spirit can be as detrimental to the quality of a human life as a malnourished and shriveled body can. It doesn’t always show on the outside, but if you watch long enough and listen carefully enough, you can recognize them in others—and in yourself.

With apologies to T.S. Eliot, I call them the hollow men and women. They are robust on the outside but shrunken on the inside. They are well fed in body but malnourished in spirit. It can happen to any of us. The reality of our journey is that all of us pass through a wilderness experience sooner or later. All of us experience a hollowness that comes with a loss of spirit. Sooner or later, all of us come to place of hunger that we cannot satisfy. But Jesus’ words in his own hunger and deprivation remind us to keep our hands open, to open up to receive, to accept, to allow God in to provide the nutrition for our spirit that we need every bit as much as we need the nutrition for our body.

Now, I’m going to take the time to insist that there is no body/spirit dichotomy here. There no “never-the-twain-shall meet” in relation to our physical selves and our spiritual selves. Each is a component of the other. During the wilderness experience of his journey, Jesus recognized the physical temptation that came with his hunger for the spiritual temptation that it was. The spiritual temptation was to grasp control of his own wellbeing out of the hands of God and by his own power to craft on his own a solution to his wants and his needs. But the inner voice of the Holy Spirit at work in Scripture said, “Not so fast my friend.” “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The physical and the spiritual components of our living are not “either/or”; they are “both/and.”

Some of us here this morning find ourselves very much like the people in chapter six of John’s gospel who when Jesus said, “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world,” they responded, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus answered, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:33-35). This bread for the journey, this nutrition for the spirit, cannot be grasped or seized. It can only be received, accepted, allowed in with hands wide open.

So the next several times you pray, let me suggest to you that you practice praying with your hands relaxed and open as a reminder that in addition to buckling up and lightening up, we must open up. Our journey is with open hands, not clenched fists. Our hands are open in thanksgiving to God, and our hands are open in welcome and embrace to each other and to the so-called “other,” whoever that might be. Our hands are open in compassion and generosity.

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? Only if you keep your hands wide open.

Photo by Sharon Mollerus, used by license under Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: Proofing the Dough (Or: Lightening Up)

Matthew 13:24-33
The Second Sunday after Epiphany 2011

Note: I confess that I am a preacher who is always suprised whenever I discover that someone actually listened to what I say. So you can imagine my surprise when this morning, as I walked out the aisle during the singing of the Doxology, several paper airplanes flew toward me--and from adults, no less! Priceless!

We all know that before we begin a trip, no matter how short or how long it may be, we always “buckle up.” A month or so ago, as I prepared to back out of the driveway of the home of Demauth and Bea Blanton down in Union where I visited them, Demauth stood at the end of the drive giving me a hand signal that I didn’t recognize for a minute. And then I realized that I hadn’t yet buckled my seatbelt, and he was signaling me to buckle up before I started back to Greenville. But this morning, as we continue on the journey of the stewardship of our lives, I want to suggest that in addition to buckling up, we need to lighten up. Lighten up.

As our nation pauses on this long weekend to remember the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am reminded this time around of how often and how deeply the metaphor of the journey appears in Dr. King’s understanding to the Civil Rights Movement, in Dr. King’s understanding of the movement of human history, and in Dr. King's understanding of his own life.

His first book, published in 1958, was titled Stride toward Freedom. In that book, King laid out what he called his own “pilgrimage [or journey] to nonviolence.” The intellectual side of that journey this pilgrimage began, he said, his freshman year in college when he read Henry David Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience. Thoreau’s idea of “refusing to cooperate with an evil system” fascinated him, he wrote (Stride toward Freedom, p. 73).

Several years later, in 1950, when he was in seminary, King heard the Baptist pastor and university president Dr. Mordecai Johnson speak of a recent trip to India and of the life and the teachings of Mohandras K. Gandhi. Having read Thoreau and having heard Johnson, King became committed to “the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence” (Stride toward Freedom, p. 79).

Five years later, King put his intellectual commitment to nonviolence into direct action for the first time during the Montgomery bus boycott that began with the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955. As King articulated it, the idea and practice of nonviolence contained “six key principles. The first principle is that is possible “to resist evil without resorting to violence.” The second principle is to seek always “to win the ‘friendship and understanding’” of one’s opponent, not to humiliate him or her. Third, nonviolence opposes “evil itself, not the people committing evil acts.”

Fourth, persons “committed to nonviolence must be willing to suffer without retaliation as suffering itself can be redemptive.” Fifth, “nonviolent resistance avoids ‘external physical violence’ and the ‘internal violence of spirit’ as well.” As King put it, “The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him” or her. And sixth, engaging in nonviolent resistance requires “a deep faith in the future” grounded in the conviction that “the universe is on the side of justice.” That’s the framework of the journey of the Civil Rights Movement that King sets out in Stride toward Freedom.

In the final public address of his life the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, TN, King framed his own life and ministry in terms of the biblical image of the ancient Israelite journey out of Egypt and through the wilderness when he said, “I’ve been to the mountaintop. . . . And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything.” There’s a journey worth taking. Surrounded by threats on his life (evidently with a premonition of his own death), surrounded by fractures and competing factions in the movement he was attempting to give leadership to, and surrounded by resistance to his work not only by white people but by some black people who accused him of moving too slowly, too indecisively, who accused him of cowardice for his unwillingness to take up arms to end oppression, King was able to say, “I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything.” There’s a life worth living. There’s a journey worth taking.

It is unfortunate, I think, that King’s legacy of nonviolence is too often analyzed as a method for social change and not often enough proclaimed as a way of life, a way of living and being. On the other side of the horrific incident the week before last in Tucson, AZ, as I have listened to some of the public reactions, especially in the political arena, I am saddened to watch and to listen to how little we have learned from King. We have a holiday in King’s honor, but our nation has yet to learn the most basic and most important lessons King taught and preached and lived.

I, for one, have been glad to hear the calls for “civility” in the political arena and in the public square. But I tell you, “civility” is sterile and lifeless compared to King’s call for friendship and understanding with one’s opponents. Wisely crafted and Constitutionally grounded policy for the licensing and controlling firearms is worth debating, but it pales by comparison compared to King’s call to avoid “an internal violence of spirit” as well, not only refusing to shoot one’s opponent but also refusing to hate her or him. That’s what we need to hear in the political arena and in the public square. Adopting a King holiday means nothing if we don’t adopt King’s journey as well.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells a story about a field that a householder had planted with wheat. But weeds sprang up among the wheat, and the immediate impulse of those who were watching over the field was to pull out the weeds. But the householder in the story surprised everyone by saying, “No, don’t do that; for in rooting out the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” Do you see the nonviolence of that parable?

The late Dr. Foy Valentine was the long-time Executive Director of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission. When he died in January 2006, he was characterized by a Dallas newspaper as “a white Texan who, during the 1960s and ’70s, forced fellow Southern Baptists to confront their denomination’s racist past and move toward integration.” The last time he was here at First Baptist Greenville, two years before he died, Foy told me that during that era, one of the most famous Southern Baptist missionaries of the twentieth century stood up on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting and made a motion that the staff of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission be “eliminated.” “Eliminated?” Foy asked. “Terminate my employment, that’s one thing. Fire me, fine. But eliminate me?”

It is not only politicians and partisan pundits who use extreme language that reveals an internal violence of spirit. It happens in the church as well, whenever we fail to put “friendship and understanding” ahead of opposition, whenever we are unwilling to suffer without retaliation, whenever we don’t refuse to hate our opponent, whenever we give up our deep and abiding faith in God’s future regardless of the circumstances of the present.

Now if all that sounds like too big a thing for you and for me to accomplish, take a look at the two short parables that Jesus tells after the parable of weeds. All it takes is a tiny seed, Jesus says, to produce a large tree. All it takes is a pinch of yeast to leaven an entire loaf. That second short parable in Matthew 13:33 suggests to me that proofing the dough, allowing the yeast to ferment, allowing the dough to rise is a too-often ignored metaphor for the kingdom of heaven and the work of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t stop working the dough long enough for the yeast to ferment, you end up with flatbread, not a loaf. And a lot of what we are living these days is flatbread because we are unwilling lighten up and proof the dough, just let it alone and let it rise. Lighten up.

“I’m happy tonight,” King said. “I’m not worried about anything.” Who among us can say that even when we are not surrounded by threats on our life, faced with a premonition of our own death, and surrounded by fractures and competing factions and resistance in the workplace, at home or in school. So this morning, in effort to help us all lighten up on the journey, I’d like you to hear another parable, a contemporary one. It’s the parable of Throwing Paper Airplanes in Church. Becky Ramsey wrote this parable from a real-life experience. Becky wrote. . . .

Don’t tell anyone, but someday when I’m in the building and dressed for it and no one is looking, I just might try it myself, just to lighten up. Just to remind myself that the kingdom of heaven is never so serious that it fails to include children of God of all ages at play under a tree under which Christ's stories are told. King told us that. The kingdom of heaven is where “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.”

Congregations such as ours are called to be the leaven in the loaf. We are called to cultivate friendship and understanding even where there is opposition. We are called to set aside the internal violence of the spirit and to refuse to hate. We are called to suffer without retaliation. We are called to sustain a deep faith in the future. That’s the journey we’re on. And every once in a while, it just might require throwing a paper airplane in church and taking the secret slide. So let’s lighten up. Let’s lighten up.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

A Beach Picture, Snow and Ice, and Resurrection: "While it Was Still Dark"

When I finally became a citizen of facebook nation, someone asked me why in the world I posted a beach picture--topless, no less, someone else pointed out--on my fb wall on a day when the part of South Carolina where I live was getting eight inches of snow. It's like this.

When Bev and I lived in Princeton, autumn was my favorite season of the year. By the end of August, the nights were turning cool enough to need a sweater, and the chill of September and October screamed, "Football!" "Hot chocolate!" and "Let's jump in the leaves!" Thanksgiving was a celebration of plenty in the face of impending winter, and December's snows made Christmas lights brighter by far than they are at home in the American South.

But by the middle of January, the snow was piled by the curb and the sidewalks, crusted and yellowed and blackened. The dingy gray carpet on the field where we walked our dogs was now cold and oppressive, covering as it did the green, green grass of our home-away-from-home until March.

Do you remember the line, "April showers bring May flowers"? That was obviously written by a northern poet, not a southerner. Down home, we have crocus in February, daffodils in March, and azaleas in full bloom by April. Living in the northeast, January was the month of the beginning of a months-long longing for spring that came far too slowly.

January was also the month when the cruise lines saturated the airwaves with advertisements. The television constantly showed sun, sand, sea, bathing suits, beach balls, beach umbrellas, carefree people cavorting and carousing all day long and deep into the tropical night, while we huddled inside in our little apartment and outside in our coats and mittens and toboggans (those are "knit hats" to everyone outside the South, "tooks" to Canadians). "The beach! The beach!" we yearned (that's "The shore!" for you Jerseyites). "Ah, for summer!" we cried. Winter was cruel enough; the cruise lines made it crueler still.

Hence a beach picture on my fb wall in the middle of January in the throes of snow and ice.

The biblical Song of Songs reflects the yearning for winter to pass in its celebration of the arrival of spring:
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
(Song of Solomon 2:10-13)
Could I sign you up for a cruise in the southern Caribbean about now? How about a beach in Belize or Costa Rica or Panama? "Arise, my love, and come away!"

In the Christian faith, the passing of winter and the arrival of spring has long been associated with resurrection. There are both historical and theological reasons for this association. But there is a reason of the Spirit also.

Resurrection is a spiritual light at the end of the tunnel. Resurrection is the Spirit's whisper in our soul in the literal and figurative coldest days and darkest nights of our lives. When what was once as fresh and clean and lovely and enchanting as the windblown snow has become crusty and yellowed and blackened and the enchantment is gone, resurrection is a ray of hope in the light in which we are always held but cannot always see because of the darkness around us and within us. "While it was still dark," the Easter story begins (John 20:1). Resurrection.

Sometimes a beach picture is just a beach picture. But sometimes a beach picture is a whisper of the Spirit to our soul, a proclamation of resurrection.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Bread for the Journey: Communion and Community

John 6:25-35
The First Sunday after Epiphany 2011


Bread for the Journey. Bread for the Journey. Let’s begin the journey of the stewardship of our lives with an overview of where our journey begins and where it ends and how we get from the beginning to the end.

Psalm 139 tells us about our beginning: “O Lord, you know me. . . . For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb” (Psalm 139:1,13; NIV, adapted). Psalm 139 tells us that for every one of us the journey of our life begins as a gift from God who created our inmost being and knit us together in our mother’s womb.

Psalm 139 also tells us that the journey of our life continues with God. God did not create us only to abandon us by the side of the road to fend for ourselves. The journey of our life takes place in the constant presence of God. Psalm 139 says, “Where can I go to hide from your spirit? Or where can I flee away from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, the Pit, you are there. If I take flight on the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast” (verses 7-10; NRSV, adapted). In other words, wherever we go on the journey of our life, we go with God and God with us. Jesus said, “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). The journey of our life is a journey from God and with God. Even when it does not feel like it, even with it does not look like it, even when we do not think it is so, even there God’s right hand holds us fast.

Every one of us is on a journey from God, with God and to God. Jesus also said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:1-3). That’s the journey of our lives: from God, with God, and to God. The entirety of our existence is played out within the envelope and the embrace of the constant presence of God. God is at our beginning, and God is at our end, and God is at our every point in between.

Now, if that is so—and I for one believe with heart and mind and soul and strength that it is so—then it follows that the journey is the thing. It’s about the journey, not just the destination. Some of us Baptists, among other Christians—and among some Jews and Muslims, too, for that matter—have gotten that whole destination and journey thing the wrong way round. You’ve heard the old story about the revival preacher who got all wound up in his sermon one night and said to the congregation, “Everybody who wants to go to heaven, raise your hand!” A smattering of hands went up, and he said, “Come on, don’t be bashful! Raise your hand if you want to go heaven!” More hands went up, and so he said it again, until everybody in that little church had a hand up, except for one grizzled old fellow way at the back. And the preacher pointed at him and said, “You there! In the back! Don’t you want to go to heaven when you die?” “Oh, when I die?” the old man asked. “Well sure, I do,” he said. “But it sounded to me like you were trying to get up a busload to go right now.”

That old fellow at that back of the church knew better than to sell the journey short for a busload of the destination. He knew better than to think we live without God on earth in order to live with God in heaven. We don’t go to heaven to be with God. The whole message of Advent and Christmas and Epiphany is that heaven came down and glory filled our souls. Emmanuel is his name: “God is with us”: “Lo, I am with you always,” Jesus said. So, if God in Jesus Christ is with us always, then our Christian faith and practice is not about where we’re going as much as it is about how we’re getting there from beginning to end. It’s about the journey from God, with God and to God.

Frank Mayfield is 97 years old, and he’s been a member of First Baptist Greenville since . . . well, since Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. Frank grew up in the thriving metropolis of Cowpens, SC, where his father owned and operated a general store. Frank cut his teeth on retail sales and operations, and as a youngster he aspired to be a great salesman. And he became one, too, a salesman with a national and international reputation. For you literary buffs out there, if the great American playwright Arthur Miller had ever met Frank Mayfield, his Pulitzer Prize-winning-classic Death of a Salesman would have been a very different play. Frank Mayfield is no Willie Loman.

One day when Frank was young, he told his father that his goal in life when he grew up was to make a million dollars. I probably don’t need to point out that 90 years ago in Cowpens, SC, a million dollars was an astronomical sum of money. There weren’t any millionaires in Cowpens in those days. In response to that astronomical goal, Frank’s father said something to him that he has never forgotten, and by which he has lived ever since: “Frank,” his father said, “enjoy the journey. Enjoy the journey.” Jesus said of his own teachings, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). The point of my teachings, Jesus said, is so that my joy may be in you, and so that your joy may be complete. Could Jesus have said, “Enjoy the journey,” any more clearly? From God, with God, to God: enjoy the journey.

In this morning’s gospel lesson from the sixth chapter of John Jesus is in a conversation about the journey. In particular, he’s in a conversation about bread for the journey. The conversation takes place in the aftermath of an amazing event the day before in which Jesus had fed a crowd of 5,000, we are told, in spite of the fact that there was initially no more food at hand than five barley loaves and a couple fish (John 6:9). That amazing feed reminded at least some people in the crowd of the great journey of Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness toward the land of promise. On that journey, we are told, the Israelites awoke to a daily provision of “manna.” The books of Exodus and Nehemiah call the manna “bread from heaven” (Exodus 16:4; Nehemiah 9:15). The Israelites received their “daily bread” in the form of manna, and when Jesus fed the whole crowd that was following him, that made some folks think of Moses and the Israelites and the manna.

But Jesus said to the crowd, “The only reason you’re following me today is because you got your bellies filled yesterday” (John 6:26). “I fed you because you were hungry, but I’m not just talking about your physical hunger,” Jesus says. “I’m talking about your spiritual hunger. I’m talking about the emptiness in your soul, not the emptiness in your stomach I’m talking about feeding you with ‘the food that endures [not for just a day, but] for eternal life. The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” When they heard that, at least some people in the crowd said, “Sir, give us this bread always.” “Let heaven come down and glory fill our souls,” they said. To which Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry” (John 6:35). Jesus was talking about our spiritual hunger, the emptiness in our soul.

This time next week, our Cuba mission team who leaves on Thursday will be worshiping and breaking the bread of life with our sisters and brothers in our partner congregation La Iglesia Bautista del Camino in Guanajay. This plate and cup and pitcher for communion that the team will carry with them as a gift from us are a reminder of what fills the emptiness in our soul. They are a testimony to the spiritual reality that even though our two nations are separated from each other by political and economic and social ideology and demagoguery, our two people, First Baptist Greenville and the Baptist Church of the Way in Guanajay are united in communion and in community in Christ.

The first time Javier Perez and I sat down together to talk about our respective congregations and communities and countries, I listened to him talk about how the souls of Cuban people have been emptied by decades of poverty and alcoholism and addiction and domestic violence and discrimination against women and homophobia and racism. But you know what? As I listened to him, I realized how the souls of American people have been emptied by decades of poverty—and affluence—and alcoholism and addiction and domestic violence and discrimination against women and homophobia and racism.

In Guanajay and in Greenville, as we have worshiped together and prayed together and worked together and talked together, we have discovered together that “We are trav’lers on a journey, fellow pilgrims on the road” and that “we are here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load.” We have discovered together that “We are one in Christ our Savior” and that we “are sent to serve the Lord.”

And that’s the final piece of the overview of our journey. We are not a congregation of wanderers and seekers. To be sure, every one of us at some time or another finds ourselves wandering in a wilderness and seeking something we have lost and cannot find. But together as a congregation in communion and in community with Christ and with one another we are created and called and sent to serve the Lord, each and every one of us a minister in each and every interaction and transaction of our lives.

That’s our journey: from God, with God and to God; the journey is the thing; enjoy the journey. As fellow pilgrims on the road, worship together, pray together, work together, and talk together to discover together that each of was are created and called and sent to serve the Lord.

And that’s the invitation this morning to the journey of the stewardship of our lives. Our invitation hymn is “We are one in Christ,” which is printed in your order of worship. The invitation of Christ and this congregation is open as we stand and sing together.

Photo by Alex Leung from Six Steps Photostream, used under license of Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.

Beginning and New Beginning

John 1:1-18
Epiphany Sunday 2011

A couple days before Christmas, I was helping my eighteen-year-old son change a flat tire on his truck in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. To tell you the truth, I was enjoying myself. I’m not a fan of flat tires, mind you; but once your kid leaves home for college, changing a flat tire together in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant actually feels like quality time together.

We weren’t quite finished when we were approached by a panhandler, a man in his late 30s or early 40s asking for a meal. He said he was embarrassed to ask for help, and he didn’t want money. But he said he was an out-of-work construction worker and he had four mouths to feed, and if I would buy him supper, he would sure be grateful to me. I wanted to say to him, “Can’t you see you’re interrupting a father-son thing here? Leave us alone.” Then I wondered, “Do I have a neon sign on my back that flashes, ‘Sucker!’?” I wanted to say, “Go scam somebody else, man. I don’t have time for this, and your supper is not in my budget.” Not to mention the fact that we were in the parking lot of a burger joint and he wanted dinner for four from the chicken place a half a mile away. Right.

But it was a couple days before Christmas, and he sure enough looked as though he was down on his luck, and he didn’t ask for cash, and I thought about what I would want somebody to do for my son if he was out of work in his 30s or 40s with four mouths to feed, and besides, it had only been ten days since I had preached a sermon about God being in the business of filling the hungry with good things (Luke 1:53; 6:21), so the next thing I knew, I was standing at the counter of that chicken place buying dinner to go for four people I still don’t know.

I don’t know whether I got scammed or whether I actually helped someone, but along the way the fellow I bought dinner for said this: “I’ll be glad when this year is over. I sure hope next year is better than this one was.” At one time or another in our lives, every one of us has a deep need to turn the calendar to a new year. Sooner or later, every one of us comes to a place in our lives when we need fresh start, a new beginning.

That’s what those New Year’s celebrations that some of us are still recovering from do. “Ringing out the old and ringing in the new” is our culture’s attempt at a ritual of new beginning. Those resolutions we make his time of year express the yearning for a fresh start that deep in the human soul we hunger and thirst for. We need new beginnings, and that’s what this morning’s gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary is about. It’s about a new beginning.

John 1:1-18 begins by talking about the old beginning: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” Those verses are about creation, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). But the point of talking about the old beginning, about creation, in the first three verses of the gospel of John is to create a springboard for talking about a new beginning, about a new creation, about being born all over again “of God,” verse 13 says.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is about “new wine” and “a new garment” (Luke 5:36-37) and “a new covenant” (Luke 22:20) and “a new commandment” (John 13:34) and “new life” (Romans 7:6) and “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and “a new self” (Ephesians 4:24). God knows every one of us needs a new self every now and then! And this morning’s gospel lesson is the springboard to a new self for every one of us, for every one of us “to be renewed,” as Ephesians 4:23 puts it, and “to clothe [ourselves] with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).

If you only look at the surface of the New Year’s celebrations and New Year’s dissipations and New Year’s resolutions and New Year’s dissolutions, you might not recognize that underneath it all is a deep hunger and thirst in the human soul for a fresh start, a new beginning; but that’s what it is. And verse 12 in this morning’s gospel lesson provides the blueprint, the “new and living way,” as Hebrews 10:20 puts it, to that fresh start, that new beginning, that “new self” that God knows every one of us needs. Three words in John 1:12: receive, believe, become. Receive, believe, become.

Have you ever thought about why it is that “self-help” books are a billion-dollar business? It’s because self-help doesn’t work. If self-help worked, you could by one good self-help book and you’d be done. But have you noticed how those of us who buy self-help books can’t buy just one? It’s like that bag of potato chips: you can’t eat just one. You have to have another and another and another because self-help doesn’t work. Self-help can’t create a new self; it only nurtures the hunger and thirst of the deep need of the human soul for a new beginning. The new beginning that leads to a new self can only come when that hunger and thirst on the inside receive from the outside the nourishment we need. That’s not just a theological assertion; it’s a biological and spiritual reality.

Your body can feed on itself. In the short-term, your body can burn the fat you have stored up, and it can devour the muscle you have built in order to keep itself alive and functioning. But sooner or later, your body must receive nourishment from the outside—protein and carbohydrates and minerals and nutrients and fluids—that will restore the muscle and replenish the fat reserves that it can live on for only so long. Like body, like soul.

The words of Jesus in the gospel of John express this biological and spiritual and theological reality when he said, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). How can that be? Never hungry? Never thirsty? We don’t know any condition of the human body or the human soul in this life in which hunger and thirst are permanently satisfied. But here’s the thing. It’s not one-and-done. It is the constant presence of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, “God with us,” feeding our hunger and satisfying our thirst, offering us again and again the bread of life and the cup of new life.

Now, look at the order of things John 1:12. Receive, believe, become. We don’t receive because we believe. Belief comes from receiving, not the other way around. Belief comes from receiving, not the other way around. That’s one of the things that the so-called “new atheists” refuse to understand about the Christian faith. The Christian faith does not begin with a prior assumption of belief. In fact, the Christian faith begins in the absence of belief. Christian faith germinates and takes root and sprouts and grows when someone recognizes that he or she has received something spiritual from the outside in that is every bit as real as the something nutritional that our bodies receive from the outside in. The Christian faith does not begin within us; it begins outside us in a mystery that we come to understand as God who acts on us and in us and with us so that we come to believe in God because of what we have received, not the other way around. Receive, and you will believe. Receive, believe, become.

When I was much younger, growing up Lutheran, I didn’t understand the old Baptist propensity for an annual revival. I understand it now. It was an expression of the deep human need for a new beginning. It was grounded in the recognition that sooner or later, every one of us comes to a place in our lives where we need fresh start, and an annual revival—like New Year’s and the arrival of spring and the first day of summer and the beginning of a new school year and the beginning of new church year at Advent and the celebration of the birth of Jesus in our world and in our lives—offered one more opportunity for a person and a community to claim a new beginning, a fresh start, for becoming who God has created and called them to be all over again. It’s a shame we urbane and sophisticated Baptists have lost that.

But we haven’t lost it entirely. Because every time we set this table we extend an invitation to receive, to believe, and to become. Not everyone comes here hungry and thirsty for this bread and this cup every time we serve it. That’s why communion doesn’t necessarily move you every time you receive it. We don’t do this every month for everyone. We do this every month for the sake of the one person among us who comes into this room hungering and thirsting to receive, to believe, and to become. The rest of us take the bread and pass it on, and we take the cup and pass it on, not for ourselves but for the sake of the one person in the room whose deep hunger and thirst has brought them this morning to this place and to this people where and among whom they can receive and believe and become who God has created and called them to be.

So let’s take the bread and pass it on; let’s take the cup and pass it on. Because someone among us has a deep need to turn the calendar to a brand new year. Someone among us—maybe you—is hungering and thirsting for a new beginning, a fresh start, to receive, to believe, to become.

Photo by Andrew Dallos, used under license by Creative Commons.

This material is Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeff.rogers@firstbaptistgreenville.com.